Daily Archives: October 30, 2011

The manuscript seems straight out of fiction: a strange, handwritten message in abstract symbols and Roman letters meticulously covering 105 yellowing pages hidden in the depths of an academic archive.

Now, more than three centuries after it was devised, the 75,000-character Copiale Cipher finally has been broken.

The mysterious cryptogram, bound in gold and green brocade paper, reveals the rituals and political leanings of an 18th-century secret society in Germany. The rituals detailed in the document indicate the society had a fascination with eye surgery and ophthalmology, though it seems members of the society were not eye doctors.

“This opens up a window for people who study the history of ideas and the history of secret societies,” said computer scientist Kevin Knight of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, part of the international team that finally cracked the cipher. “Historians believe that secret societies have had a role in revolutions, but all that is yet to be worked out, and a big part of the reason is because so many documents are enciphered.”READ MORE

TOKYO A virus that infected computers at Japanese overseas diplomatic missions had been designed to send data to servers in China, a report said on Friday.

The virus — Backdoor Agent MOF — has been found to have infected computers at around 10 embassies and consulates, and at least two of the servers designated as the recipients of stolen information were in China, the Yomiuri Shimbun said.

The virus is capable of transmitting user IDs and other information to terminals outside and operating software by bypassing authorised users, the daily said.

The domain of the servers was the same as that used for earlier cyber attacks on Google and tens of other companies, the Yomiuri said, quoting unnamed sources.

A “backdoor” virus opens a route into a computer’s system to allow access by a remote hacker, who could use it to steal data.

The Yomiuri earlier this week reported Japan had found viruses in computers at overseas diplomatic missions including those in France, the Netherlands, Myanmar, the US, Canada, China and South Korea. MORE

One of the more topical discussions in Steve Jobs’ biography addresses Apple’s tendency to “employ” a disproportionately large number of workers in China. And that strategy has been fodder for debates on national news networks like CNN because of stubbornly high levels of unemployment in the U.S.

Let’s start with some recent statements by luminaries as politically diverse as Jim Hoffa, International Brotherhood of Teamsters President, Donald Trump, and CNN’s Piers Morgan.

Here’s what Hoffa said in a segment entitled “Fixing the Jobs Crisis” with CNN’s Candy Crowley on September 4. “Instead of investing here, everything they (Apple) do is in China…I think the president should challenge the patriotism of these American corporations.”

Piers Morgan made a similar statement this week to Donald Trump, who has been an advocate of making things in the U.S.

“More people were working for Apple in China than in America,” Morgan said when talking about Steve Jobs’ reign at Apple. Trump also had plenty to say about manufacturing things overseas, such as: “You must stop our jobs from leaving this country. We must start manufacturing our goods.”

Like this:

If you’d like a better understanding of what it takes for sperm to be considered fertile, go grab your measuring spoons and look at the quarter teaspoon. Roughly that amount of ejaculate should boast anywhere between 20 million and 150 million sperm. Anything less than 20 million and fertility just might be an issue.

The simple fertility chip includes fluid channels and electrodes.

(Credit: University of Twente)

So Loes Segerink, a researcher at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, hasdeveloped a “fertility chip” that can accurately count one’s sperm concentration as well as measure its mobility (when discussing sperm the synonym “motility” is often used). What’s more, the test can be taken at home, with the ejaculate being, ahem,collected in a more private environment.

While simple home tests are already commercially available, the concentration readings are, well, simple, and indicate only whether sperm concentration is above or below that 20 million mark. But one man’s sperm concentration of 19 million is certainly more fertile than another man’s count of 1 million.

Segerink, who will be defending her doctoral dissertation in November, says the sperm flows past a liquid-filled channel on the chip beneath electrode “bridges.” When cells pass beneath these bridges, a brief fluctuation in electrical resistance occurs. By counting these events, the chip is counting sperm.

To test whether her chip was reading any particles at all, not just sperm, Segerink added tiny microspheres of liquid. The system was selective enough to distinguish sperm from these spheres, as well as to distinguish white blood cells from other bodies.

Actual sperm motility is also an important component of fertility. The chip not only counts sperm, but sorts motile sperm from its dormant brethren, and then tallies up the groups. (Segerink did not report on what percentage of sperm must be motile to be considered fertile.)

To develop this chip, Segerink worked with the BIOS Lab-on-a-Chip research group and collaborated with various companies boasting unusual names, including PigGenetics, Lionix, and Blue4Green. She’s now working toward starting a company through which she can continue refining the chip and its read-out device for market use.SRC : Cnet _ Read More

China is stepping up its semiconductor manufacturing efforts and using domestic chips for its latest supercomputer. It’s going to be interesting to see how fast China can close in on U.S. supercomputer processor makers Intel, AMD, and Nvidia.

The New York Times reported that a supercomputer called Sunway BlueLight MPP, was installed in September at the National Supercomputer Center in Jinan, China. The details emerged at a technical meeting. The real catch is that China used 8,700 ShenWei SW1600 chips.

Those semiconductors are homegrown and indicate that China is aiming to be a major chip player. The New York Times story was mostly sourced to Jack Dongarra, a computer scientist at the University of Tennessee, but Chinese sites reported on the technical meeting. Dongarra helps manage the list of Top 500 supercomputers. China’s previous supercomputers used Intel and Nvidia chips.READ MORE

What happens if you combine Twitter-like sharing, the depth of blogging and the voting mechanics of Reddit? You might get Chime.in, UberMedia’s take on social networking.

Chime.in, which makes its public debut Tuesday, shares some similarities to Twitter’s interface, but UberMedia CEO Bill Gross argues that his social network tackles completely different problems than Twitter or Facebook. Unlike Twitter, which describes itself as an “information network,” Gross describes Chime.in as an “interest network.”

Like other social networks, Chime.in lets users share content with others. It has a newsfeed, profile pages and a system for following other users. The social network doesn’t have status updates, though. Instead it has “chimes,” which are a cross between a Facebook status update and a blog post.

Users are allowed to write short articles on Chime.in — up to 4,000 characters. A chime displays a headline, the first few sentences of a chime, a piece of multimedia (an image, a video, etc.), a profile picture, interest tags and options for liking, commenting and sharing. Chimes included threaded comments that include a Reddit-style up or downvote system for surfacing the best comments to the top of a chime.MORE